With technology advancements and our ever-increasing knowledge, services provided to individuals, such as nursing and healthcare, have become more complex as well as increasingly expensive. Efforts have been underway to improve such services including the management of healthcare services. These efforts include implementing the use of electronic healthcare records for patients.
Medical care is often perceived as consisting of a physician's diagnosis of the patient and a physician's treatment of the patient. Medical records and the emerging electronic healthcare records are reflective of this perception. However, the amount of time that a physician spends with the patient during the diagnosis and treatment process is often far less than that of the one or more nurses providing care to the patient.
Additionally, medical records and electronic healthcare records document the tested conditions of the patient (vital signs, test results, and so forth) and document the patient's asserted condition (pain, discomfort, and so forth). These records may include actions taken with respect to the patient, such as when medication was dispensed. However, the contemporary records fail to fully capture neither the condition of the patient, nor the nursing care provided.
A need therefore arises for a system and method of effectively managing services provided to individuals, including both the nursing and healthcare provided. There is a further need for a system and method to more fully capture and understand the condition of the individual, including progress toward desired healthcare outcomes. There is yet a further need for a system and method that generates or adjusts a healthcare model associated with the patient based on patient and nursing relationships, and captures and manages nursing practice.